You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 149. Shane Cole FINAL.mp3
Shane Cole:
It is a very emotional experience watching this kind of pornography because of the amount of shame, the amount of negativity, the amount of insecurity it plays on. But that's one of the reasons why it's so addictive, more addictive than other kinds of pornography is because it's like pulling on your emotions. and triggering traumas and insecurities that you have. And that like pairing that with pleasure is very powerful. We know in the brain and neuroscience that pain and pleasure is processed like right next to each other. So when we add the bullying that takes place basically with this kind of pornography it basically is turning people into masochists and the other thing that happens is that you're in this trance like you're literally like it's just you're just stuck watching it because it's so intense you have no boundaries as to what image is going to come next or what is going to be said next and it just keeps going so you're basically learning at a very young age that you have no boundaries that people can do whatever they want to you You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Today's guest is Shane Cole. He's the founder of Inspiritist Breathwork. He got into breathwork, meditation, and alternative holistic healing as a means to heal an addiction he had starting from a very young age to sissy hypnosis pornography, which eventually led him to believe he was trans and have a brief dalliance with hormones before realizing he was on the wrong track and turning it all around. Shane's story is inspiring and informative. We have much to learn. both about the trap of sissy hypnosis pornography that young men like him are falling into and Some healing ways out of it. So Shane, I'm so glad to speak with you today. Welcome to my podcast

Shane Cole: Thank you, Stephanie. I'm glad to be here. I just want to start off by saying I'm very grateful that you have this podcast and that you're having these conversations and sticking your face right into this issue because I know obviously it's quite controversial, but these are the conversations that really need to be had right now because so many people are suffering. So, thank you for bringing me on, for holding this space, and I'm excited to have a conversation with you surrounding this.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you. And likewise, I think you are also putting a human face and name and story to just one of the many ways that someone who's been through the trans experience, if you will, can emerge into young adulthood, you know, maybe relatively more unscathed than some of your peers due to the fact that the amount of time that you were taking hormones was so brief. But I love that you have this balance of a story that will be very sobering and sort of an alarm call to many of our listeners. But at the same time that you found some healing arts tools, you have a sort of wounded healer journey and now a way to uplift others as well. And I think that as time goes on, At least I personally hope to see more people like you, people who've been through this moment in history where they got caught up in the whirlpool that is the distraction or delusion that one is the wrong sex, and who emerge into various forms of creativity and healing and have different gifts to offer the world. So, I'd like to start, though, with the hard part. Oh, and I need to thank one of my listeners for asking me to speak with you. It's actually someone who's a member of the ROGD Repair community, which is specifically a place for parents to go for resources and tools. And I recently shifted over the benefits of locals' membership, which never really got all that busy, over to ROGD Repair, which is It's bustling over there because these parents want and need these tools. And so one of those sort of perks that I shifted over from locals to ROGD Repair was the opportunity to ask questions of my future guests, to suggest guests that they want me to interview. And I'm very grateful for the suggestion. Someone asked me to get in touch with you. I had never heard of you before. And so I found you on Instagram and found that You didn't have a way to email you, only to book a meeting, which I love because I'm all about synchronicity and reducing the amount of time spent on asynchronous communication myself. So that's how we connected. And I want to thank those listeners and members of the community who are so engaged. But like I said, I wanted to start with the hard part, which is the sissy hypnosis pornography. And this is really especially for all parents of boys. It's been an ongoing topic of discussion that you really can't start young enough with protecting your kids from what is out there on the internet and sometimes in real life. too. And I think your story is a testament to that. So let's just start with sort of the shock factor, which is that this started in sixth grade. Can we start there?

Shane Cole: Yeah, for sure. So like most boys going through puberty, I started to have erections. I started to masturbate right around fifth and sixth grade. And right around that time, I got my first Instagram. It was like just a new app, like right when I got my phone back in like 2012. Crazy to see how much the world has changed because of that. And porn was just on the internet for all of us middle school boys to dive into. And, you know, this is way before, yeah, parents really had an understanding of like what, and obviously parents still don't have an understanding to the extent of which is on the internet, but this was like way before safeguards. And I guess to backtrack a little bit, There was a movie I watched in the fifth grade that had someone cross-dressing in it. And that was like initially what put the idea into my head. And I started fantasizing, thinking about what it would be like to dress in women's clothes, to be a girl. And I went on for a bit, fifth grade going into sixth grade, and I was too scared to talk to anyone about it because, yeah, I grew up in a very masculine household. That wasn't a conversation I felt safe with bringing up to my brother or my parents, so I just kept it on the inside. I went on the internet to find community, and I quickly discovered this content called Sissy Hypnosis Pornography. I was just typing in like, boy turns into girl, like into the internet bar or like something like that. And then when, you know, I found out what Pornhub was, all my friends and I started typing that in the Pornhub and I started to go down this rabbit hole into just what we've discussed as sissy hypnosis pornography. Fizzy hypnosis pornography is a very powerful kind of pornography that utilizes professional-grade hypnosis techniques to convince its user, typically young boys like myself at the time, men, that they are actually not men, that they're transgender. And it utilizes a wide range of techniques, binaural beats, So if you have headphones on, it sucks you into it. It uses repeated mantras. So it's constantly telling you. It's constantly saying phrases. Typically the phrases have to do with first bullying male, common male insecurities, like, oh, you have a tiny penis, or oh, you can never get a girl, like you'll never have a girlfriend, or like you're weak, you're small, you're pathetic, you'll never achieve your dreams. And because of all this, you should cut off your penis and be transgender and be a girl instead. And what is particularly dark about this messaging is it's not just, its goal is not just to turn its user into thinking that they're trans, but to get them to be a prostitute, basically. So not only is it messing with people's gender identity, but it's also messing with their sexual identity as well. So basically it's encouraging boys, men to let go of all responsibility and just to be a slave to hedonic pleasure. So this, again, this messaging takes place through binaural beats, the repeated mantra. So it's actively telling you these things while you're watching pornographic content of like cross-dressers, transgender people. It has like text on the screen matching what it's saying. It has like flashing images. So it's like highly, highly stimulating. So it's like switching between different videos. So it's not like a common like, porn video where there's like a slow build up foreplay and it's just like hyper intense dopamine stimulating images the whole time. And it is quite it puts you into a trance basically. So then. You're consuming this content, you're being told these things, and on top of that, you're masturbating to it as well. I guess I would say I was masturbating to it as well. So I was in, like I said, sixth grade. I was in this very open state sexually. It was the first content I ever masturbated to, I ever ejaculated to, which is quite sad to think about. But that's the definition I would give for sissy hypnosis. Do you have any clarification before we go into how it impacted me and how the addiction unraveled?

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, so a couple points I just want to emphasize. One is that you as a boy in sixth grade just stumbled into this. And I would like to clarify a few things. So first, hindsight being typically much clearer than our insight at the time, looking back You said that there was a movie that planted the idea of cross-dressing, but was there anything in particular before you encountered the porn that you think compelled your curiosity about the idea of turning into a girl? Was it nascent, emerging attraction to girls? Was this a coping mechanism for something going on in

Shane Cole: It's not, it's not my trauma to share on this podcast, but I have, I certainly have ancestral trauma from, yeah, I don't, I don't need to get into that exact, but things that my parents did a really great job raising me. I had a great childhood. I grew up in a very privileged area, great town. I got to ski my whole life. They loved me to death. They still do love me. And they had an incredible amount of baggage that was not resolved by the time I was conceived and by the time they were raising me. So I definitely believe their epigenetic imprinting, something I actually got to be in a research lab at USC studying epigenetics and sexual trauma. So, I understand the impact of incestual trauma quite well from a biochemical level, but I think it had to do mostly with that because I had a great childhood. And we can go into the topic of epigenetics more. That might be helpful for the parents who are listening. We could do that now or at a later point in the podcast.

Stephanie Winn: I think if there's just anything more you want to say about that.

Shane Cole: Totally, totally. So epigenetics is the study of how we, how our body interacts with our genetics, with our DNA. And it's been shown that traumatic experiences that we experience in our life get coded and held on to in our epigenome. and changes how we interact with our DNA coding and our DNA sequencing. So a brief example just to help people understand how this happens and the research behind it. There was a study done with mice. Rachel, if people want to look more into this, Dr. Rachel Yehuda is like the top epigenetic researcher. But there's a study done with mice where the mice were in a cage and they would introduce a smell into the cage and then they would electrocute them after the smell. And they classically conditioned the mice, so they'd continue to do this. And so when they would smell the smell, they would expect to get shocked, and they would have a stress response even before they had the shock. Those mice had kids. Kids were separated, like they weren't raised by the parent, right? They had kids. And when their kid would smell the smell, they would have a stress response, even though they had never been electrocuted in their life. This goes on for three generations from the original trauma. So what the whole study of epigenetics shows is not just our, our DNA, it's not fixed how we interact with it. The environment and the experiences we have in our life change how, not only how we interact with it, but how our future offspring will interact with their DNA. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: You know what that reminds me of? Some of the fascinating stories of organ donor recipient.

Shane Cole: Yes.

Stephanie Winn: Right, so like there's one that I heard of a little girl drowned and her heart was donated to a little boy in need of a heart transplant. And that little boy who had no knowledge of his donor was suddenly afraid of water when he'd always loved water before. And that little boy reported that he sometimes felt like he could communicate with the child whose heart he received and that she felt scared. So, and that's just one of many fascinating stories where it's like there's a cellular memory that can be passed through organs and tissues that can be passed through, as you're saying, our DNA on an epigenetic level. And I guess what I just wanted to say to the parents listening to this, because a lot of my audience is parents who are worried about their kids, is that there's no shame in it. It's not to make you feel bad for your baggage. We all have baggage, but it is just amazing how sensitive children can be to the things that you try so hard to protect them from. And sometimes the bigger the walls you put up psychologically because you know you have your baggage that you're trying to protect them from, the more that stuff goes underground, the more it can show up in unexpected ways where the kid themselves may not know why they're acting out in a particular way. But sometimes we discover through family therapy, for instance, that the kid is acting out some, you know, repressed dream of the parent or some reaction to a trauma that the parent had long before the child was born. These things are not unusual. So again, it's not to blame or shame the parents, like you're giving your parents credit for doing their absolute best to give you a happy childhood. But that being said, as a sensitive person, you have to give yourself room to explore whether it feels like some of what was being enacted there might have been coming from another source. My next clarification point is just this binaural beats. So I'm familiar with what you mean when you say that, but for people who've never heard of binaural beats, can you explain how that works?

Shane Cole: Yeah, I can't, I don't, I can't explain it in too much detail, but they're basically certain frequencies of sounds that are utilized in hypnosis in general, but also in sissy hypnosis pornography that more easily puts people into a disassociated state. So. You know, an example of this, people can look up the devil frequency. I think it's like 441 hertz or something like that. But that puts people's nervous system into more of a disassociated state. And it's called the devil frequency.

Stephanie Winn: The devil frequency. Is this used in Sissy? Yes. Yes. Wow.

Shane Cole: Yes.

Stephanie Winn: But then there are… Sorry, go ahead.

Shane Cole: There are also positive frequencies like 432 Hertz. That's the Schumann's resonance, the resonance of planet earth. That's a frequency that earth puts out. So these beats can be used in the positive or negative ways.

Stephanie Winn: One way that I'm familiar with the use of binaural beats is and the reason I understand that it's called binaural two-sided is because you have to be wearing headphones and that the sound vibration coming through one ear and the sound vibration coming through the other ear are different frequencies, and your brain makes up the difference, and the difference is measured in hertz, which also corresponds to brainwave states. So binaural beats are often used for like focus or relaxation. If you want, let's say, an alpha state, which is considered a relaxed state, a theta state, which is a more deeper state of relaxation, or trance, which is closer to sleep, Or you might use something like a beta hertz frequency, which is higher, which is more for intense concentration. So I'm more familiar with the use of binaural beats for either concentration or relaxation. But that's just fascinating that there's actually something called the devil frequency that is used. I mean, you can't get much darker. that targeting innocent little children who are just beginning to experience those first moments of sexual awakening of puberty and just trying to corrupt them from the very beginning. So you said that the sissy hypnoporn consists of binaural beats, repeated mantras, oftentimes which capitalize on common male insecurities and shame, And then you also said that where this leads is encouraging body modification, trans identification, prostitution. What I want to ask you there is like, is it progressive? Is this designed to meet people in a way that maybe they're not like starting off right away with, you should go get your genitals cut off?

Shane Cole: yeah it is progressive so i didn't include this fully but initially i found it on instagram and i found sissy captions so they're just pictures of like beautiful girls on instagram with captions that say, oh, you have a tiny penis. You should be a girl instead. Or it's so much better to wear panties, like lighter, lighter things. But there's sissy captions. You can like, if you don't believe me, you can look on Instagram, sissy caption and find it quite quickly. But they're just pictures of hot girls. So it draws. So young boy, sixth grader. She's a hot girl. And then this caption that's telling you something. So that's what I initially started masturbating to. And then it's progressed into sissy hypnosis pornography when I found Pornhub, when I found pornographic websites. But yeah, there is a whole progressive model built in a pipeline, one may even call it, of intensity that can do quite a lot of damage to people's brains.

Stephanie Winn: Now this is going to jump around in terms of just the chronological order of your story. Yeah. But do you have any insight or guesses or perhaps even just pure speculation as to who is behind this content and what their agenda is?

Shane Cole: Yeah, it's a fascinating question. It's something I've thought about a lot. I have actually considered my therapist and my mother and I have talked about hiring a private investigator to actually go after this and to do it. Yeah, so that's something we've discussed. There are no plans being made to do it, but there's certainly speculation on the internet. People have considered a few things. Some people think it is coming from pimps, from prostitution rings. So there will be more prostitutes to profit off of.

Stephanie Winn: Male prostitutes.

Shane Cole: Yeah, trans, trans prostitutes. I don't, I don't know how that one sits with me just because of how widespread this is and how prolific it's becoming. Just to give you an example on the numbers, Sissy Hypno subreddit was at a hundred thousand subscribers before the beginning of COVID. And now it is nearing 500,000 subscribers, exponential. increase in usage.

Stephanie Winn: I have to stop and comment on that because you know in the gender critical community all this discourse about this exponential rise like you just described in teen girls, right? And what I've just been noticing over the last year or so is I think there's an exponential rise in boys following behind the girls. I think the girls are several years ahead of the boys. But hearing you say that from 2020 to now we're in 2025, that you've seen that exponential rise in this male-dominated trans-identified community, oh boy, that's scary. Parents coming to me, I don't know if there's something about my vibe and my approach to these issues. But lately, the parents coming to me skew toward parents of sons. And they're a little bit older because boys are emotionally behind girls in their development too. So I'm not sure that we might be past the peak with the girls. I'm not sure if we're past the peak with the boys.

Shane Cole: No, because I think, well, because no one's talking about it and that's why we're having this conversation. I would argue, especially with those numbers, because that's just the data that's out there. You can see it. You can go on Reddit and see that that many people subscribe. to this subreddit, I would argue that a large proportion of boys who are transitioning to girls have been influenced by this pornography. But the tricky thing is it's so shameful. It's so disgusting. that no one feels comfortable talking about it and sharing about it. That's why, you know, I'm the first, really the first person openly talking about this and my personal experience. But many people are being influenced by it and are siloed off in echo chambers and feel too scared to talk to their parents, to talk to their friends, or even talk about it with their therapist. And even if they bring it up with a therapist, like the first time I brought it up with an older therapist I had. He just said, oh, porn isn't bad. You should stop thinking porn is bad. I think that's hurting your mental health more than just if you were just to accept it. And I left that guy.

Stephanie Winn: So as you had to guess, again, a lot of this is pure speculation. He's, you know, letting our intuition make sense of the trends that we're able to see. But if you had to guess out of all the trans identified young men out there today. First of all, what percent of them are watching porn and then what percent of them are specifically into this sissy hypnoporn?

Shane Cole: I mean, it's got to be like ninety nine percent of boys are watching pornography right now. unfortunately. And if there is a boy who is experiencing feelings of gender dysphoria and is also watching pornography, I Yeah, it's very easy to speculate that they are, that they've been sucked into this community in some part. I mean, it's 95% of boys who are experiencing gender dysphoria, who are watching pornography have also like, have probably found this stuff. I mean, 500,000 People who subscribe and I never even subscribe like I don't have a reddit account I would just go on reddit and look at it, you know, and that's just reddit That's just Reddit.

null: 500,000.

Stephanie Winn: Concerned parents, I want you to take this part to heart, because Shane, you know, you and I were speaking before we started recording, and one of the things I told you that I really want everyone listening to know as well, when I talk to parents who are concerned about their teen boys, and we talk about porn, or not only teen, teen and young adults, Boys, when we talk about porn, they're hesitant to accuse in their mind in the same way that they'd be hesitant to assume that their son was snorting coke. And I say, this is more of an Occam's Razor situation. It is the most likely explanation for what you're seeing. It's a minority of boys, a small minority who aren't watching porn. And given what I've learned about how easy it is to fall into the sissy hip path as you are articulating, you know, I just, I want them to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. I want them to hear it from you as well as they're hearing it from me that Occam's razor, this is the most likely explanation. Now, that's bad news, yes, but the good news is, the silver lining is, that it changes what options parents have available to communicate. Because when it comes to something that feels so extreme from a parent's perspective, And so concerning and also has all the shame and stigma around it. Most parents don't don't want to accuse their sons, and I wouldn't recommend accusing them. That's not the right word. But when you do bring this up eventually, when you get your relationship to a point where you can bring up porn. It is best to bring it up from the angle that you know it's probably already happening. Not that, oh, I found this evidence that it's happening, or I'm concerned this might be happening. No, like, bring it up like you know it's happening. Now, there's a lot you have to do to get your relationship to the point where you can have that conversation. But that is the good news that I want parents to hear in all of this, is that you can assume this is absolutely a culprit and that all the feelings that Shane is talking about are part of the picture for your boy, right? The shame, the insecurity, the humiliation. We want to talk about, too, the dopamine wiring. And I'm imagining later in your story, we'll get to the healing and how you've used breathwork to heal your brain. But, you know, there's just a fascinating process that's happening when you take something as natural as a young boy's emerging libido and you cross-wire it with emotions that are not necessarily part of a healthy sex life. Emotions like shame, right? So once you start linking the experience of that libido being fulfilled in some way with the experience of shame being triggered or these other things, I can imagine it's very confusing for the brain. Can you speak to that?

Shane Cole: Yeah, I definitely can. It is a very emotional experience watching this kind of pornography because of the, yeah, the amount of shame, the amount of negativity, the amount of insecurity it plays on. And I'm just sitting there masturbating to it. Horrible. To to connect something that's supposed to be such an expansive and enlightening experience to something so dark. But that's one of the reasons why it's so addictive, more addictive than other kinds of pornography is because it's like pulling on your emotions in a really hard and triggering traumas and insecurities that you have. And that like pairing that with pleasure You know, it's very powerful, right? Like we know in the brain and neuroscience that pain and pleasure is processed and like exactly that's like right next to each other. So when we add the bullying that takes place basically with this kind of pornography, it basically is turning people into masochists. Honestly, which is horrible. And the other thing that happens too, is that you're in this trance, like you're literally like, it's just, you're just stuck watching it because it's so intense. There, you have no boundaries as to what image is going to come next or what is going to be said next. And it just keeps going. So you're basically learning at a very young age that you have no boundaries, that you have no boundaries, that people can do whatever they want to you, which just in my experience, continued to increase the weakness I was feeling inside the, the feminization that was taking place. you know, using feminine. And as I'll talk about, because they use the term feminization, the type of feminization they're talking about is like the most degraded form of the feminine. Just like weak, pathetic, useless, submissive. It's just Encouraging that in the structure and the fabric of the pornography, how it breaks boundaries, and then with all the hypnosis techniques as well. So it has been, yeah, very hard to learn how to stand up for myself. in life for how it's been very challenging for me to share opinions that are contrarian. Obviously, I'm doing it now. I'm in a much better place. But it really just puts holes in people's identity structure and in children's development. Massive holes.

Stephanie Winn: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit ROGDRepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SomeTherapist2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGDRepair.com. I don't think I ever let you finish your answer to the question of who do you think is driving this agenda. You started to elaborate.

Shane Cole: Yes, I where my mind typically goes is. There's this anti-life narrative that is being played out in society at large. It is common in higher intellectual circles and universities. Maybe people can trace it back to the world economic forum that there are too many people on this planet. Why would you bring a new child into this planet? That's so broken and there's so much pain. Why would you do that? You shouldn't do that. And it plays this, you know, obviously encouraged brainwashed castration plays right into this narrative that there should be less people on this planet, that life isn't worth it to continue living. So there are some people who like, trace it up to the elites or, you know, the World Economic Forum. A lot of people do that with many things. I have no idea if that's the case or not. Some people link it to the CIA as this could potentially be an offshoot of MKUltra being the brainwashing experiments that the CIA did in the 60s using substances like LSD to see if brainwashing was real or not. So some people think it could come from the CIA. And just to highlight this point of the conversation, we already talked about this. I met last week with Dr. Stephen Haasen. I went on his podcast, America's Leading Cult Expert. He was in a cult, got out of the cult, spent his whole life studying cults, having conversations with people who've been in cults, helping other people out of cults. And a part of his education, he went to school to be a hypnosis therapist, graduate level. so he could understand brainwashing techniques. And when we initially talked before the podcast, he said that the hypnosis techniques, and the podcast is going to be up soon, you can go look at it, he named more of the hypnosis techniques that are utilized because he saw some of the videos. He said the hypnosis techniques are graduate level, that you would have to go to school to understand this. And when we were talking on the podcast, I wish I asked him why he said this. I didn't get to ask him why, but he went as far as to say military grade hypnosis techniques are utilized in these videos, which definitely implies MKUltra. Another place it could come from that I've considered is communist actors. If we go back and look at the cultural revolution in China, during when Mao took over, something he did was androgynize the culture. He made women cut their hair. He made everyone wear the same kinds of clothes with the goal of breaking down the atomic family structure, with the goal of breaking down love. at its core because that structure and that family unit is, if it could be broken down and people could be individualized more, then they could be more easily controlled by the state. So these are all theories that I hold in my head very lightly, no evidence to back up. And I don't go crazy as a conspiracy theorist researching this stuff or wondering where it comes from, but these are theories that I have.

Stephanie Winn: It seems to me like the part of me that's willing to entertain such theories thinks that it would be very foolish for the American government to do this to its own citizens. And I'm much more likely to believe that this is a tool of psychological warfare deployed by a foreign enemy. I mean, we know that, for example, TikTok comes from China but is not allowed in China. Like that should set off alarm bells for anyone. The fact that ByteDance in China is set up to be educational, to have restrictions on the amount of time youth can spend on it and what kind of content is shown, whereas the version of the app that's available to American citizens is like crack for the brain of young people, so I tend to think more along those lines when I get into the suspicious, perhaps paranoid ways of thinking, but I mean this stuff deserves our deep suspicion and paranoia. These are mind control strategies being dumped en masse for free on the internet so that young, innocent, open minds can find them and as you're saying, have these formative experiences where in many cases like yours, a child's first sexual experience is happening via this stuff that is so incredibly brain-warping. Now, you mentioned the concept of feminization, and you did begin to clarify how what feminization means in these videos is not necessarily a reflection of how people like you and I might like to think about the role of the feminine. But can you sort of explain from the ground up for those who are maybe just hearing this for the first time, the idea of feminization and forced feminization in the context of hypnosisy porn?

Shane Cole: Yeah, totally. It's definitely one of the primary themes in these videos. Forced feminization. There, for most boys, have an incredible amount of fear of expressing any sort of femininity. We have been taught that we can't cry, that real boys don't cry, that we have to be tough and hard and emotionless all the time. And obviously this creates a lot of emotional distress for boys. It is not the proper development. that should be taking place and it plays into these videos quite well because there is so much shame around the feminine and expressing the feminine and it's so challenging for boys to express, and we're talking about the sacred feminine, and we'll be talking about the toxic feminine as well in this. Truly, what we all want, especially boys, is to know how to feel our emotions. to know how to sit with our emotions and be okay and just cry and let it out, or to express love in deep and meaningful ways, and even just to hold hands with your friend who's a guy. Girls do it all the time, and in our culture, men don't. And there's so much sadness in that. And there's certainly, I believe, a desire to, for, for most boys and men to tap into deeper emotional connection, but there's so much shame and negativity around it that they don't want to. So you find this content and the idea of being forced into being feminine, like you wouldn't willingly do it. Because I'm a man. I'm a man. I would never do that. I'm a man. I'm a tough guy. But if I was forced to, oh, that's the only way. That's the only way I would become feminine is if someone made me. So it's very disrespectful. It's very objectifying of women and what women are because obviously the pornography is not talking about all these positive things that I was just sharing. What the pornography is trying to get you to do is to wear pink, to like have big boobs, to be a common refrain is to be a slave to cock in these videos, to be a submissive slut. That is what it is. It is asking. So the desire that boys want to be more emotionally open and to be feminine in a positive way gets co-opted by this because there's no model set for them for how to healthily integrate the feminine into their psyche. So the symbol gets co-opted by the toxic aspect of it, and they get forced into doing it. And then it becomes a turn-on to be forced into doing it. And then, again, this plays into the continuous feeling of being submissive and being okay with non-consensual acts, which we will get into my story later on, played a role. But this whole idea of forced feminization, of being as submissive as possible, can lead to very dangerous places.

Stephanie Winn: I have to ask about the cognitive dissonance that this creates for sensitive young men. I think we're, we're meeting you at a time in your life that you're like a gem that's been polished. Like you can actually see the sparkle of luster and the colors. Like imagining, imagining that you were once, you know, a gem with a lot of, a lot of dust on it, you know, where am I going with this? As we meet you in this more crystalline version of yourself, it's easy to see that you are a sensitive young man. I imagine that as other sensitive young men whose sparkle and luster is covered by their current stage of development, that as they get caught up in this, There must be a deep cognitive dissonance between the part of them that knows how incredibly sexist their beliefs are and the part that wants, that cares about women and girls, whether it's respecting their mothers and sisters, whether it's a genuine admiration they have for the girls they like. whether it's the pressure they felt in the sort of post-MeToo era, and what to speak of all the social justice messaging, because the vast majority of young adults, in my experience with a trans identity, are affected by what I call the trifecta of social contagion, which consists of gender identity ideology, cluster B personality traits, and woke beliefs about social justice. So, there seems like a very split personality, I think, for a lot of the males, especially the heterosexual males caught up in this, that they publicly espouse beliefs about social justice. And, in fact, that might be driving part of the trans identity because it's not okay to be a so-called cishet white male. Right. And as people who stand for social justice or want to believe that they do, a lot of these beliefs that are entrenched in the porn are the polar opposite. Right. And so can you speak to that cognitive dissonance, how how it affected you and how you think it might be affecting other young people?

Shane Cole: Well, first off, just to catch one thing you said at the beginning, it's not their belief. Those sexist beliefs were not mine. They were deeply implanted in me by an outside source, which, as I'm sure the listeners are now starting to see, is quite malevolent. which is unfortunate, but I definitely agree with you. I grew up in a very liberal environment during Me Too, and the feeling that started to develop was that my masculinity, especially my sexual urge, my sexual energy as a man is dangerous. and is not helpful and leads to rape culture and leads to domination and leads to the domination that our culture is having over the planet. This is all because of unchecked male sexual energy. And it's not good. And you should do away with it. And yeah, so obviously there's this larger cultural narrative that is unfolding, that's taking place right now, and it goes hand-in-hand with sissy hypnosis pornography quite well. And what I've come to discover, and we can go into this later, is that male sexual energy is actually quite vital and important if it's utilized in the right ways. But most boys have one talk from their dad. And their dad tells them to wear a condom. And that's it. And this sexual energy is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. And we don't talk about it. at all. And because of that lack of conversation, because of the shame that there is surrounding it that has been handed down to us through religion and now is like heightened by this woke ideology right now, we don't talk about it at all and it creates pain. So that is one part of it that's really important. I would say there is a massive cognitive dissonance because I started to believe that the more I feminized myself, the safer women would feel around me. That is, and I've always been attracted to women, and I've had the utmost respect and love and admiration for my mom, for all the women in my life, for everyone. And I had a horrible game. I lost my virginity in high school. I had a few girlfriends in high school, but going into college, I was quite bad with attracting women into my life. And after, and I guess I'll back up the story a bit more. I watched this pornography all throughout middle school, throughout high school. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't act on it at all. I covered it up and yeah, it was pretty normal on the outside, but I got into college, COVID hit, the addiction got much worse. Yeah, during COVID, I was in LA, fall of 2020. I was living in a house with eight hyper feminists. We were on lockdown and I went the deepest into the pornography addiction I had ever been in my life. It was horrible. And then it like constantly like I would walk out of my room and this rhetoric of kill all men like we hate men just like It was horrible. I was like getting hit on all sides by this which was quite nuts. And then as COVID started to come out, I was meeting girls, going on dates, but I just kept getting friend-zoned, rejected. And summer of 21, it got to a point I was so depressed, I was like, you know what? Maybe I am trans. maybe this whole man thing is just not for me. And I made a pact that summer that when classes would get back into person in fall 21, I would show up to school cross-dressed and be a girl and fully be out in the open and not care. And I got clothes to go to school in. I got makeup. I got good at makeup that summer. And I socially transitioned fall 21 and yeah, presented as a girl for that entire semester. So that was when it really hit and took a hold. COVID into college, being in a new environment, being really in LA at a liberal institute in a house with like very liberal people. That's really where it got a hold of me.

Stephanie Winn: There's something you said that We can't emphasize enough. You said something along the lines of, I thought that the more I feminized, the safer I was for women. This is such a light bulb moment. At least I hope it will be for people who are having a hard time understanding this. Like I think that you just made something click for them. We know the reality is the opposite, at least as far as the TERF, GC side of things. There are a whole lot of women out there who feel like our greatest threat is wolves in sheep's clothing, men who do not own the power that they have as men, men who want access to our spaces, our bodies, and our identities. We know that's the biggest threat, but this is a very real, it was a very real mindset for you. And there was a lot that contributed to it, and it's a very real mindset that a lot of young men are still in. And my goodness, that dissonance, the way you highlighted it between what you were doing behind closed doors and the social environment that you were in, in this household full of raging feminists, man-hating feminists. Of course. Like, of course it makes sense that this is where you went. I realize we really kind of walked very slowly through certain chapters of this conversation, and then you were like, wait a minute, I need to catch listeners up to speed and explain that I went through the social transition. So I do want to invite you to go ahead and slow down and invite, you know, Any other details that you wanted to share about that process after many years of being addicted to hypnosis-y porn? It sounds like your social environment was a factor. The stress and isolation of the lockdown to the fact that the people you lived with were like the people that you spent all your time with. The guilt and shame, the cognitive dissonance. Are there any other factors that you wanted to highlight that pushed you into that so-called?

Shane Cole: No, I think I named all of it. It was really, and because, because I started to have the desires, the, or the, uh, the fantasies before I started, a little bit before I started watching this to see if no, it was like, okay, maybe, maybe this is something natural. Like, I just got to see, I just got to try it. And I was so depressed and I like really didn't know what to do. So that is what led me to that. But it was a crazy experience. Yeah. No, it was crazy. I started to. receive so much more attention from the external world, compliments, people hyping me up, especially at music festivals. I went to my first, second music festival, second, like, big festival, first big festival, second, like, music festival that fall, and the amount of, like, and that was, like, right after COVID, so, like, everyone was hyped to be there, you know, like, one of the first festivals back was in Las Vegas. Life is beautiful. And the amount of like validation and attention I received from strangers was so powerful. It like rocked my world. It was crazy. It was crazy.

Stephanie Winn: Looking back, what do you think was driving that attention that they gave you?

Shane Cole: Oh, I think, I think naturally people like boundary breakers. I think, I think that's always going to be like that, but I, you know, especially specifically with, with, well, I think. I think too, to be quite frank, I did a really good job. I looked good as a girl, and I think that really shocked people.

Stephanie Winn: You said you studied makeup?

Shane Cole: Yeah, makeup. The outfits I had were a lot of fun. But I think the question you're getting at more so is, everyone wants to be an ally. now, like everyone wants to be an ally for social validation or to feel like they're doing something important in some way. And that's for better or for worse, right? In my situation, worse, because it made the gender dysphoria far worse, far worse.

Stephanie Winn: All right, so walk us through this. So fall of 2021 is when you socially transitioned. You got all this validation. There was also the sense that people were just beginning to socialize outside their bubbles for the first time. So it was kind of this added intensity to social interaction. And one thing that makes your story unique is that you said that you told yourself, let me just try it. And We know just cutting ahead that you were only on the drugs for three weeks. I think a lot of young people have this mindset, oh, I can just try it, and haven't thought of the, what's the word I'm looking for? It's not opportunity cost. sunken cost, you know? They're not considering when you put so much psychological weight onto something and you tell yourself you can just try it, maybe you can't just try it, I think, for a lot of young people. There's so much attached to this that it's not really that easy to just be like, oh, you know what? I actually kind of feel funny on this. I'm going to stop. So I think I do think that that's something that sets your story apart, not to say that there are other young people who try the drugs and stop after a few weeks. But I think it's harder to stop than people think. So tell us about that process of the social transition and then getting on the drugs and then how you decided to stop the drugs.

Shane Cole: Yeah, totally. Well, that fall, yeah, the gender dysphoria developed a lot. I was watching YouTube videos of transgender people who were like, I've been on HRT for nine months and I'm feeling great, you know, like all that stuff. And then that December, I told my parents I wanted to transition and we got into a huge fight. And when I left home and went back to L.A., that was when I fell the deepest into the pornography I had ever been in. And I actually started going out in L.A. and had to, like, follow the programming entirely. And I had random hookups, and I put myself in two situations where I was sexually assaulted. Yeah, it was based like I was watching the pornography. It was telling like, and I was like, there's like nothing left. Like there's nothing left for me as a guy. Like I felt so horrible and yeah, I put myself in situations with no boundaries that were very traumatic and that left scars and wounding that took a long time to heal. But that's why I brought up Pornography just in the structure of it is non-consensual because of how people get sucked into it and how you don't have consent as to what comes on the screen next, especially with sissy hypnosis because the images are changing so quickly. And yeah, it breeds a complete lack of boundaries that can be very dangerous.

Stephanie Winn: So the porn had been grooming you and so that you were the perfect victim of the assaults that later transpired and that the assaults were when you were socially transitioned?

Shane Cole: Mm-hmm. And then I started taking hormones right around then. And I, I like fully decided I was, I like, there's nothing that like, I don't want to date. I don't want to date girls anymore. Like, I just want to protect women. I want to stay away from women, just protect them. Like, cause I am too much, like I'm too perverted and disgusting and I'm just gonna, like hook up with guy or whatever. I don't even, but I decide I'm like, I'm done being a guy. Like this masculine energy is horrible. Like I just want to repress it as much as possible. I just want to be fucking done with it. And the week I started taking hormones, I met my first long-term girlfriend, like two days after I started taking hormones. By far the craziest synchronicity of my life. And she was really cool with me cross-dressing, being different, you know, like she was cool that I'd socially transitioned, but she also just really liked me just as a guy. We were on the ski team together at at our school, and obviously when I was skiing, I wasn't wearing makeup or girls clothes or anything, so she saw me just as I was. She really liked me. And three weeks after meeting, we went camping in Death Valley National Park, just us two, and had a great experience. And again, when you're camping, right, you're not putting on makeup or Like, you're just out there like a monkey in the desert, you know? And we had a great time. We were there for three nights. The last night, we did some magic mushrooms together just for fun, just to explore the desert. And during the trip towards the end of it, we were laughing the whole time. I was feeling, like, so much love from her. And I definitely knew that she thought I was beautiful just as I was. I realized, you know, how could this girl find beauty in me, but I can't find any beauty in myself. I need some serious help in the self-love department. And then I also realized during the trip, like, damn, I'm really taking these hormones because I'm addicted to this pornography, because this pornography has been telling me to. And I should most certainly, and I didn't, I didn't think, for most of my life, I didn't think I could get clean from the pornography. I had tried many times, like I'd go like a month or a month and a half or two months, but it would always come back. So I was like, when I started taking hormones, I was another just like hopeless, like I'm never getting out of this addiction. So maybe if I like cut my libido by taking hormones, then I won't have to watch this stuff. And that moment on that trip in the desert in Death Valley National Park with my first long-term girlfriend, I had hoped that I could potentially beat it. I had no idea how, but I stopped taking the hormones after that mushroom trip in the desert.

Stephanie Winn: You are not the first detransitioner who has credited psychedelics. I'm sure you know this. Proud to say I have one of the few podcasts on which we actually talk about this because it's it's two volatile taboo topics together at once. Detransitional psychedelics. But I have heard this before, that someone was, you know, on these hormones or otherwise wrapped up in it and then did psychedelics and got enough of a bird's eye view on their life that they were like, what am I doing? and in your story that goes along with actually experiencing a real girl. And, you know, in contrast to this idealization and devaluation that I've been hearing so much of, that's something I want to kind of highlight as an element of your story of the addiction to the false beliefs. And again, when we look at that trifecta of social contagion, the gender identity ideology goes together with woke beliefs about social justice, and cluster B personality traits. And idealization and devaluation is something we all do. It's human. It's not just people with personality disorders. But that being said, idealization and devaluation play an especially large role in personality psychopathology, particularly narcissistic and borderline personality disorders, which are overrepresented in the population of trans-identified people. So there's so much idealization and devaluation of masculine and feminine roles both. There's an idealization of the feminine, devaluation of the masculine, and yet the version of the feminine that's idealized is also itself very devaluing. There's no healthy pedestal to put anything on here right it's all just corrupt in one way or another so it seems like this antidote was a this this level of insight and realization that snapping yourself out of these patterns believing hope is possible and change is possible and also the the contrast from this idealized and devalued pattern of the idea of what a girl is or what a woman is also the idealized and devaluation pattern of what a girl or a woman is according to feminism, the raging feminist that you lived with, right? There's also idealization of a certain version of the feminine, devaluation of a certain version of the masculine that goes along with that ideology too. And then it's like this girl just broke through by being a real person, a real woman with a genuine love, expressing itself in a naturally feminine way. Yes. Another thing I really want to highlight that you just said, because again, I think that you're giving parents a lot of insight into how their sons think. You said part of the motivation was that by taking the drugs, you could diminish your libido so that you wouldn't feel so reliant. on the porn right so it just shows this like grappling this push-pull that you had with the porn addiction that you didn't really want it you just felt powerless over it so your your own sex drive becomes the enemy and then there's this idea that the drugs which by the way for people who aren't familiar I don't know what drugs you were on maybe you can clarify but A typical course of action for these young men is to start on spironolactone and then start on estrogen a couple months later. Spironolactone is a testosterone suppressor. So the first step for a lot of these boys is to suppress their testosterone. Is that what you were doing or did you jump straight to estrogen?

Shane Cole: Straight to estrogen.

Stephanie Winn: Were you also taking Spiro or?

Shane Cole: I did not start taking Spiro. I got my hormones off the internet and was self-dosing.

Stephanie Winn: Another important thing people to be aware of, in case you didn't know this was happening, there is a black market.

Shane Cole: Yes, horrible. I did go to, before December, I did go to the UCLA Gender Affirming Care Clinic, and I walked in, they did my tests, and they gave me no mental health check. And then I got my tests back a week later and they said, you're good to go. You didn't start. But because of the falling out I had with my parents, I didn't want them to know that I was taking it. So that's why I went online to get them.

Stephanie Winn: Also important point for parents to know. I talk to a lot of parents who are monitoring their insurance statements, medical records, the kid's bank statements, if they have shared access to that kind of stuff. And they're looking to that for evidence of whether their kid is on these drugs. But you point out some kids specifically don't want their parents to know, and so they will take a back channel.

Shane Cole: Yep. Which is obviously incredibly dangerous. Incredibly.

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Shane Cole: Yeah, I stopped. I stopped cold turkey. And that April, that was in February, that April. Gosh, that was… Yeah, wow. That is three years ago. Right around today, actually. It's crazy to look back on.

Stephanie Winn: We might be recording on a significant anniversary.

Shane Cole: Crazy. Yeah, that's just brought back a lot of memories. That April was when I started my breathwork training program. I did a nine-month trauma-informed breathwork training program. And I'm going to go back a bit just to give people a bit more context of what led up to this. I'd been interested in meditation from a very young age. I started reading about Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh in high school. I started a Buddhist club at my high school where I would just read, I would read Buddhist books to my friends and they would like color, listen to like Alan Watts videos. Yeah, it was fun. And before I started college, I lived in Nepal for three months. I did a cultural immersion trip there and that's where I learned how to meditate. We stayed at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, learned how to meditate from Tibetan monks there. And that trip really blew my eyes wide open to the spiritual world. And I'm really glad I got it there because I learned from a credible source. I got into a lot of New Age stuff when I was in LA, but I was always very grounded in that Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which definitely helped keep me grounded because of how crazy that can become, but yeah, I got back from that. The other cool thing about that trip, I mean, I highly recommend Where There Be Dragons as a cultural exchange program for DAPIER students, or just summer trips for high schoolers. No phones. I didn't have a phone for the entire three months. So I wasn't watching. I had a huge break from that addiction, thankfully. And I think experiences and trips like that are so valuable for kids now who have been raised with iPads in their hands since a very young age. So I can't recommend where there'd be dragons enough. There are many groups that do these, but that got me interested in psychology. I studied psychology at the University of Southern California. I started my psych degree. I like, as I said, I was in that research lab studying epigenetics. We were doing brain scans on meditators, expert meditators, researching psychedelic assisted therapy, ancestral trauma, epigenetics. And that was all before I socially transitioned and while I socially transitioned. It was great being in that lab. I, but in the lab, I realized I wanted to do something more hands-on. Like I want to be helping people more directly. So I was thinking about getting a meditation teacher, doing a meditation teacher training program or a yoga certification. And I stumbled upon breath work. I started practicing the Wim Hof method in 2022, which was just a daily practice. Do you know Wim Hof? I see a reaction.

Stephanie Winn: Before we go on, I'm hearing that. these spiritual practices and embodiment practices that had been with you all along really blossomed and helped you heal when you made a decision to change your life. But I'm also wondering how this sheds sort of a new angle on your story up until that point, because these were coexisting, right? For so much of your adolescence and early adulthood, you were both dealing with this porn addiction that we talked with, talked about, and briefly a trans identification. And you were also this really spiritual guy who is into Tibetan Buddhism and meditation. And so, like, how, how did you navigate those sort of contrasting aspects of your identity?

Shane Cole: Well, I think if I didn't, I was certainly drawn to them at an early age because of the suffering that was taking place inside of me with the addiction. That's definitely why I felt I was so, and I just couldn't put it down. I started reading about Buddhism before I would go to bed, and I read many books before I even graduated high school, before going to Nepal. And I was definitely looking for solace and learning how to control my mind and how to direct my mind. So as a positive, it certainly opened my mind a lot and helped me find self-acceptance, which I think allowed for the social transition to actually take place easier because I had a higher level of self-acceptance and trust, which was fascinating. But then at the same time, you know, and I thought, right, I thought I was accepting a true part of myself, but it was really something that was implanted by the pornography. So it's a very interesting question. I would also say, I probably, I most certainly would have gone, so like it helped me accept myself and open myself up to that side. I, I know I would have gone definitely deeper into the programming and brainwashing and potentially could have done more harmful acts to myself if I wasn't meditating or have those spiritual practices. A difficult question to answer is very complicated with both of them together.

Stephanie Winn: I've heard about like, so I'd mentioned to you that I'd been in the kirtan scene when I was in my 20s. And I think I had heard at one point that Jayu Tal had been battling a cocaine addiction. I don't know if you know that story. He was like a popular kirtan leader. And for those who don't know, there's an analogy here because kirtan is also an Eastern meditative somewhat hypnotic practice using music and rhythm and mantras to achieve transcendent states. And sometimes it's these sort of highly sensitive people who are drawn to these types of meditative practices and to the promise that they offer of achieving some sort of transcendental state of mind. And so your story almost kind of reminds me of that, that sometimes people have like these two competing ways of self-soothing. And one is sort of the shadow that they're grappling with that's bound up in their shame and an addiction. And then there's sort of this higher octave practice that is compelling in its own way that also promises to get you high in a way, but like a spiritual high, not a drug-induced high, you know? It seems like they were coexisting and as bad as the porn addiction was, the meditation practices and breathwork practices that you did have alongside them, that addiction was like, it gave you sort of a foot in a healthier world, a healthier alternative way to self-regulate. And so when you made the decision to break free, when you had that moment of hope that you really could successfully conquer this addiction, it seemed like that propelled you to really take more seriously this other side of you that you'd also been nurturing.

Shane Cole: Yeah, definitely. And breathwork was particularly drawing to me. That fall, when I socially transitioned, I was invited to this garage in Venice Beach to experience my first breathwork journey. The guy facilitating it called himself Kashmir Skylion. I was like, what am I getting into here? This is crazy. But these friends that I made at climbing gym asked me to come and I went. And I'd been experimenting with psychedelics for a good amount of time. And I, in that garage in Venice, had a full psychedelic experience just from breathing. Screaming, releasing, I felt my entire body being filled up with energy, almost like it was getting electrocuted. One of the most profound experiences of my life. And after that, I was like, Oh, I don't want to be a meditation teacher. I don't want to be a yoga teacher. I want to teach breath work. That is one of the coolest things I've ever done. So that, well, that fall is kind of looking around for breathwork training programs. And I found one and I was accepted into it. And April, 2022, after I stopped taking the hormones was when I started the training course and we did a breathwork journey every other week. And there were three-hour workshops and we had emotional themes surrounding each of the breathwork journeys, like inner child healing, shadow work, learning about our stress response, things of that nature. And throughout the nine months, throughout all these experiences, basically the two things that I got from these experiences was emotional catharsis. So these breathwork experiences, basically downregulate the brain's emotional regulation system. So a lot of emotions, pain that I pushed aside really came to the surface and I was able to fully start expressing myself and crying and releasing and letting go and start to understand the pain that was driving me that I kept needing to numb out with the pornography. So that emotional catharsis was really big. It also really allowed me to reconnect my body and just be okay with my body as it was. So throughout the nine months, I was actually able to completely let go of the gender dysphoria that I had had for so long and just come back to my body and love myself, which was great. So the emotional catharsis was a big point. And then the non-ordinary state of consciousness, the psychedelic experience, It's been shown in the research, very fascinating that when mammals' brains go into hypoxic state where there's less oxygen, we increase the amount of DMT in our brains. DMT is a naturally produced, one could almost call it a neurotransmitter in our brain. It's also the active ingredient in ayahuasca, which is a very famous plant medicine that's used in South America. But many people don't know our brain naturally produces this substance all the time, and that in breathwork states, we can actually increase this. But as I said, the first time I experienced this was so profound because I had no idea our bodies and brain have a built-in way to access these states. naturally and legally, just through breathing, which is so incredible. So in these states, as you said earlier, I was able, I was able to get repeatedly bird's eye views of my life. I could see all the pain that I had been through. I could also see into the future where I was going, the potential I had in my life, how much I could do and make an impact in this world if I gave it my all. So these visionary experiences were highly beneficial in waking me up from this slumber that had taken a hold of me. So the nine months progressed, I let go of the gender dysphoria, and I got a hold of my pornography addiction in a really big way. It wasn't fully out yet. I would still relapse occasionally. But something else I'll add in for the parents who are watching whose brains might be fried from the amount of social media use they use and potentially pornography, I learned a lot about dopamine, about the pain-pleasure balance in the brain, learned a lot from Dr. Anna Lemke's work about how dopamine, which creates our reward system in our brain, works on a pain-pleasure balance. So if we're constantly pleasuring ourselves all the time and instantly gratifying ourselves, with social media, with pornography, with junk food, all our dopamine gets used up and it actually creates more pain for us in our lives. And it's actually by turning towards pain in healthy ways that we tip the scales back and reclaim our dopamine and feel true contentment and pleasure. So examples of facing the pain, working out, ice baths, and then meditation and breath work, where we have to concentrate and sit with painful experiences and move through it and do it. These are very powerful ways to reclaim dopamine to help with attention span naturally. And that's what helped me start to get a hold of the addiction and drastically reduce the amount of time I was watching it.

Stephanie Winn: All right, so through nine months of dedicated practice and learning in this program, you really, I don't want to say fully conquered, but made a ton of progress on the core issues that you've been battling with for so long.

Shane Cole: Yeah, definitely. But the journey was not complete. I still had dragons to slay. I found this man named Tyson Adams through a podcast who is an internal family systems coach who specializes in helping men recover from pornography addiction. I found him in August 23, my senior year of college. And I had told my parents I was addicted to pornography, but I didn't tell them what type. And they were very frustrated with my therapist at the time, who kept saying porn wasn't bad. And they were like, yeah, definitely start working with this guy if that's really what you're struggling with right now. So I started working with him and we did a lot of IFS work and he, I was his first client who had been in sissy hypno. So it was a new challenge for him. And we've both learned a lot from each other in our therapeutic relationship. But yeah, incredible work. Can't recommend Tyson enough. He's definitely saved my life. So we did a lot of work. We built a lot of trust. And in April 24, he and three other men who have been IFS trained, ran a men's retreat, a psychedelic assisted therapy men's retreat in Costa Rica. And I was able to attend it and do deep psychedelic healing work with my own therapist, who I had built a beautiful relationship of trust with. So we were there and we were really diving into the male sexual shadow. All four of the facilitators have been in the men's work scene for a while and a lot of groups, famous ones like Sacred Sons in the men's work community, do not address the male sexual shadow, won't talk about pornography addiction, won't talk about, like, rape culture or like out of like sexual misalignments because the conversation is just too intense for most guys to handle and don't know how to facilitate. So this group of men calling themselves the Rainmakers are really, really wanting to bring that conversation and that part of the healing process to the forefront of their work. So we're diving into it there. I opened up Yeah. Yeah. No, we went, it was really incredible. We did IFS work to prepare for the psychedelic journey. We did a five gram psilocybin mushroom journey with all the guys together. And during the experience, Tyson gave us all bioelectric, which is something that he specializes in. He calls it so much psychedelic body work. He has this electrical box. that is only made in China with this electrical current. It's crazy stuff. The electrical current is safe to go through a human body. So basically, he put two pads on our kidneys where the electrical current would start to flow into us. And then he had two pads on the ground that he stood on and the electric current flowed up through his body and then out through his hands. And he gave us massages with the electrical current going through his hands and then connecting through our bodies to the other current that was connected to our kidneys. So in that. experience, I knew the rape trauma was going to come to the surface because other men were like touching me and holding me. Obviously, in this scenario, men that I trusted and that I was safe with, and we already knew that was the goal of what we were doing. And I, when it started to happen, I went into, and the trauma came up, I went into a full freeze and I was like right back there when it happened. And my therapist, Tyson said, find your no Shane, find your no. And I couldn't, it was really hard at first. She's like, find your no. And I started saying no, no. And then at the top of my lungs, I started screaming. No! Fuck, no! The loudest I'd ever screamed in my life and was just screaming and letting out. And finally he like, we took a break. He's like, all right, you found your note. But basically I was able to set a boundary for myself psychologically that I was unable to my entire life. in that psychedelic experience, which has been life changing because that fuck no energy is what has allowed me to kick the pornography addiction because I have that boundary, that strong masculine Fuck no. I love myself. I'm here for myself. I'm going to protect myself. I'm not going to watch this pornography, not just for the sake of me, but for the sake of all the women that I come in contact with, all my relationships and for all my clients that I'm working with. Fuck no. Fuck no. This is it. So it was, it was tapping into that masculine rage. that primal rage that I had been so afraid of my entire life, that was the most healing thing. And what was beautiful about it is all the other men, I was the youngest guy there, and all the other men were in the ceremony room watching this all go down. And they were like, fuck yeah, Shane, hyphen me up so much, soaking me up and witnessing me in my catharsis, which almost all men are afraid to do, to be emotionally vulnerable with other men. So this experience that they have that I just described, really the main goal of it is to set up a a masculine rite of passage that our society doesn't have. Where we go, you know, that Native American cultures have had, whether it was isolation in the forest, or it was the sweat lodge, or it was peyote, San Pedro. there were very structured rites, or the Sundance in the Lakota tradition, another famous one, there were very structured masculine rites of passage set up to teach boys how to become men and how to take on the responsibility that men needed to take on in this society. So that experience was what I received in Costa Rica. And then I got to be witness to the other men going through this and see their pain and their trauma and hold space for them. And that way, life-changing, life-changing. So that was Costa Rica. That was back in April and I'm doing, I also got to lead breathwork during the retreat for the guys, which is great. I'm going back with them this, this April, this March. Yeah. About a month from now doing another, the retreat's going to be in California. Doing the same work again. I'm still just because of how long I was in that addiction. I'm really still Stabilizing this new found masculinity and yeah, just gonna keep doing the work. But yeah, that was Costa Rica That's Tyson's work the Rainmakers. I can't recommend Tyson enough and now that I've come out of Firstly, do you have any questions on that? This, this is going to be crazy. Yeah. Yeah. This is probably going to be crazy for some of your listeners to hear.

Stephanie Winn: Well, honestly, there's no, there's no better fit for my podcast. Like this is the intersection of fringe that I cover, but you'll, you'll have to forgive me for following up such a profound story with such a silly. moment, but I've been in the public eye long enough to be able to see the comments coming in in my head when you're talking. And let me just tell you what the bad actors would reframe this dialogue as. They would say, Stephanie Nguyen recommends that people get insanely high on psychedelics and electrocute themselves in order to help you trans. That's what they're going to say about me now. We see you bad faith actors who have no intention of actually understanding what another person is saying or opening a mind to learn something new. We see you with your greedy, sniveling little agenda to corrupt and distort every gem of wisdom that passes across your radar. I was like, oh, what will they accuse me of next? But, but I mean, and one point of clarification, sorry, it's the stickler in me. I just want to clarify peyote and San Pedro are two different cactuses. They both contain mescaline, but peyote is endangered and protected. Whereas San Pedro, I think grows a lot more readily and people grow it in California and stuff like that. Just it's, it's come up in psychedelic trainings that I've done done before, but now you're in the world of retreats.

Shane Cole: Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm coming out of that. So a lot more than that. I mean, I while I was still in the addiction, while I was still in the dysphoria, I started leading breathwork. When I was going through my training, I started Yeah, I started leading free workshops for my classmates at the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at USC, which was great. I got, I did it every Monday, three hour workshops and got me a lot of practice. And I started to apply to music festivals. to lead breathwork there. Again, I love EDM music. I love the festival scene. And those were some of the first places I did it professionally. And I've continued to do that. It's been fun. I've been able to travel all over the country to work at festivals that I love very dearly and spread the medicine of breath there. And two weeks after Two weeks after Costa Rica, I hosted my first independent workshop. We brought 60 people into a nightclub music venue in Los Angeles. No one really had thought before me to do breathwork inside of a high quality music venue. And at the first music festival I led breathwork at, I got connected to the guy who runs marketing for this nightclub called The Academy. And he invited me to lead breathwork there. So it was kind of a first of its kind event, a sound immersive breathwork event. And it was incredible. And I got to learn all the marketing and the business behind event production and getting people there. And the other thing too, throughout college, I did the training and I was also studying psychology at the same time. And while the training was really good, I realized there's so much room to grow. A lot of people who are holding these certifications, or breathwork teachers, or in the new age spaces, haven't actually studied psychology in a formal sense. And I was picking up on a lot of spiritual half-truths that were getting thrown in there. Something I focused on primarily in my education was positive psychology, peak performance, and I thought, you know what, the breathwork world right now, and it seems like the psychedelic-assisted therapy world at large, It's very focused on catharsis as the goal, just the emotional release, trauma release, like we're going to do it to release the trauma, which definitely has value. But I started to think, you know, we're going into these highly neuroplastic states. This seems like a very beneficial time to ingrain new positive values and positive psychological qualities in people. So I thought, man, we're really focusing on catharsis so much. Why can't we focus on the positivity a bit more? So this event that I hosted, the whole theme was called Forging Your Purpose. So I integrated logotherapy, Viktor Frankl's work into it, and at least to my knowledge, was like really the first person trying to integrate positive psychology into a breathwork experience. So yeah, the whole goal was helping people find their purpose in life, knowing that purpose, strong direction, knowing how we want to contribute to the world and going and following it is a massive antidote to depression, to addiction, to anxiety. So basically, we utilize the non-ordinary state of consciousness that breathwork allowed just to give people a space to dream and dream and see what can I do if I really give it my all in life? What can I do if I let go of this baggage and this, all this doubt or these addictions that keep me trapped. Like what, what can I do? The goal wasn't just catharsis. It was really like just giving people a space to dream. And that's, we did it. It was great. We did another one in September and my practice has just been starting to blow up. A lot. And now that I'm out of the addiction and my brain is so free, my work and how I show up as a facilitator has just gotten so much better. So yeah, it's been a very trans 20, 24 is massively transformative and grateful to be here talking to you about this.

Stephanie Winn: Sounds like you've really come full circle and integrated your growth quite well and are feeling really good about where you're at and the future. So yeah, I mean, maybe this is a good time to ask what you're up to next and where people can find you.

Shane Cole: I am currently taking one-on-one clients. Since the podcast I have been on talking about sissy hypno, I've started to work with people who are struggling with sissy hypnosis with my breathwork coaching program. I'll take you through the Inspiritist framework that I've developed that's research backed and has already been helping men get out of this. So if you're struggling with this, I have spiritual and emotional tools, certification, a degree in psych. And not only that, I have the experience of going through it and coming out the other side. So if you need help or support or coaching, I'm here and you're not going to, you know, it's not going to be from someone who's studied it or who knows about it. It's going to be with someone who's lived it. Like I'm your companion. I'm here for you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's going on. I'm also working with clients. A lot, a lot of people come in with all types of body dysmorphic disorders. A lot, a lot of people with eating disorders, but I've also started to work with people who just have straight up gender dysphoria, helping them come back to their body through these breathwork experiences. That's been going really well. And that's, that's mainly. Yeah, what I'm up to, it's, yeah, I've just been winter mode. I've been skiing. I've been getting my schedule set for the summer with festival experiences. I moved back home to Colorado from LA. I grew up in Colorado. I'm back home in Colorado. Living in Denver, Denver's new for me. But yeah, that's really what's going on. So if you need support, please don't be afraid to reach out. If you want me to connect you to my therapist, Tyson, if you're struggling with pornography addiction, he's also a great asset for help and support in this. If you're a parent who's out there who wants to talk with a kid who has been through it, you guys come out the other side. I'm here to talk. I've done consulting with parents. just so they can hear my story. So if you want to learn more about me, we can set up a call for sure. My website and Instagram will be linked below in spiritusbreathwork.com. And then Breathing with Shane is my Instagram. But yeah, don't be afraid to reach out if you need support for yourself, for your kid, if you have any questions about breathwork, if you're interested in working with me, or if you just want to talk.

Stephanie Winn: Amazing. That's great. And I will just mention that I have heard good things through the grapevine about your direct work with people struggling with gender dysphoria. Oh, you're the quote deal.

Shane Cole: Thanks. And I will say one more thing that I'm doing right now that I'm very excited on. A client that I'm working with who is experiencing gender dysphoria asked me to do a custom camping breathwork retreat. And I've been wanting to do this for a while, and this is something I see in the future. hopefully groups of people who are experiencing gender dysphoria. This is just going to be a one-on-one experience, but I'm taking them camping in Death Valley, where I had my revelatory experience, where I let go. And the way I work with people with gender dysphoria, I have no, just to be clear, like I have no directive and converting them. I'm just helping them feel safe and process any trauma that they've been in. But That's going to be at the beginning of March, and I'm really excited for that. So yeah, if you're a parent who's out there or someone who's interested, that's another option that I do. And I'm excited to see how the first one goes. I've been camping my whole life, so this is my first time doing it in a professional setting.

Stephanie Winn: Awesome, and we will make sure that those links are in the shoutouts. So Shane Cole, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure.

Shane Cole: Yeah, thank you.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy, and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.